Numerous different products are used to provide precision cutting of various materials. These products can range from a simple cutting saw to a numerically controlled machine tool. One such system is a so-called water jet cutting system which uses a high velocity jet of liquid mixed with an abrasive to cut a material into a particular shape. The shape is defined by a cutting path to be followed by a cutting jet nozzle. Operating commands to control nozzle position define straight lines and arcs to be cut in a particular sequence using parameters stored in a memory. For each line or arc, the parameters include, among others, a tilt angle to control taper. Taper control is extremely important to the production of high-precision parts with water jet technology. A number of factors influence the amount of taper in a cut, including cut speed, the thickness and the hardness of the material being cut. Greatly reducing cut speed is one way to easily reduce or eliminate taper. However, this comes at a cost in productivity. Various known systems analyze cuts and provide taper control without the need for reducing speed by angling the nozzle while maintaining stream velocity. The result is a final part that is produced faster and with straighter walls, regardless of the thickness or composition of the material being cut.
Known taper control systems use a fixed mechanical tilt or utilize a complex mechanical arrangement to control a tilt angle and maintain the desired angle while cutting corners.
The present application is directed to improvements in taper control systems.